When he next saw Grazia, he could not help telling her of his visit. He did not tell her of the thoughts roused in him by his visit. But she divined them. He was tender and wistful as he spoke. He turned his eyes away from her and was silent every now and then. She looked at him and smiled, and Christophe’s unease infected her.
That evening, when she was alone in her room, she lay dreaming. She went over the story Christophe had told her; but the image she saw through it was not that of the old couple sleeping under the ash: it was the shy, ardent dream of her friend. And her heart was filled with love for him. She lay in the dark and thought:
“Yes. It is absurd, criminal and absurd, to waste the opportunity for such happiness. What joy in the world can equal the joy of making the man you love happy? … What! Do I love him? …”
She was silent, deeply moved, listening to the answer of her heart.
“I love him.”
Just then a dry, hard, hasty cough came from the next room where the children were sleeping. Grazia pricked her ears: since the boy’s illness she had always been anxious. She called out to him. He made no reply, and went on coughing. She sprang from her bed and went to him. He was irritated, and moaned, and said that he was not well, and broke out coughing again.
“What is the matter?”
He did not reply, but only groaned that he was ill.
“My darling, please tell me what is the matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it here?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I am ill all over.”
On that he had a fresh fit of coughing, violent and exaggerated. Grazia was alarmed: she had a feeling that he was forcing himself to cough: but she was ashamed of her thought, as she saw the boy sweating and choking for breath. She kissed him and spoke to him tenderly: he seemed to grow calmer; but as soon as she tried to leave him he broke out coughing again. She had to stay shivering by his bedside, for he would not even allow her to go away to dress herself, and insisted on her holding his hand; and he would not let her go until he fell asleep again. Then she went to bed, chilled, uneasy, harassed. And she found it impossible to gather up the threads of her dreams.
The boy had a singular power of reading his mother’s thoughts. This instinctive genius is often—though seldom in such a high degree—to be found in creatures of the same stock: they hardly need to look at each other to know each other’s thoughts: they can guess them by the breathing, by a thousand imperceptible signs. This natural aptness, which is fortified by living together, was in Lionello sharpened and refined by his ever wakeful malevolence. He had the insight of the desire to hurt. He detested Christophe. Why? Why does a child take a dislike to a person who has never done him any harm? It is often a matter of chance. It is enough for a child to have begun by persuading himself that he detests someone, for it to become a habit, and the more he is argued with the more desperately he will cling to it. But often, again, there are deeper reasons for it, which pass the child’s understanding: he has no idea of them. … From the first moment when he saw Christophe, the son of Count Berény had a feeling of animosity towards the man whom his mother had loved. It was as though he had instinctively felt the exact moment when Grazia began to think of marrying Christophe. From that moment on he never ceased to spy upon them. He was always between them, and refused to leave the room whenever Christophe came; or he would manage to burst in upon them when they were sitting together. More than that, when his mother was alone, thinking of Christophe, he seemed to divine her thoughts. He would sit near her and watch her. His gaze would embarrass her and almost make her blush. She would get up to conceal her unease.—He would take a delight in saying unkind things about Christophe in her presence. She would bid him be silent, but he would go on. And if she tried to punish him, he would threaten to make himself ill. That was the strategy he had always used successfully since he was a child. When he was quite small,
